Category: responsibility

Categories
Accountability insider corruption responsibility

My Favorite Firing

Hooray for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks! Last season, “we” won 11 games, including the Cotton Bowl. We finished No. 5 in the country, losing only to national champion Alabama and No. 2 LSU.

There were wishful whispers of “next year” and “national championship.”

Then, Coach Bobby Petrino had a motorcycle accident. No life-​threatening injuries, mind you, just scraped up a bit. But suddenly some non-​physical injuries became, well, job-threatening.

Originally, Coach Petrino told reporters that he was alone on that crashed cycle. Turned out he had a passenger: Jessica Dorrell, the team’s recently hired student-​athlete development coordinator.

You guessed it: Petrino, 51, and Dorrell, 25, had carried on an “inappropriate relationship.” Petrino also failed to disclose their relationship when he picked Dorrell over 158 other applicants for the job.

He had also not disclosed his personal “gift” to her of $20,000. Quite a bonus for an employee — or a girlfriend … or both.

University of Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long found that “Coach Petrino abused his authority … and … jeopardized the integrity of the football program.”

Soon, the hopes of many fans that Coach Petrino, and especially his winning ways, could survive the scandal, were dashed.

“We have high standards,” Long said in a statement announcing Petrino’s termination. “Our expectations of character and integrity in our employees can be no less than what we expect from our students.”

UA student athletes and Razorback fans can’t help but hope things work out on the gridiron. But standing up for principle always works out, one way or another. In this case, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation just announced a $1 million gift to the Razorback athletic program citing Long’s “courageous leadership.”

Woo Pig Sooie!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies responsibility too much government

The Trademark of Irresponsible Politicians

Who doesn’t agree with President Obama? “We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences,” he said when introducing his budget in February.

But who believes he’s serious? He went on to say that we must not treat “the hard-​earned tax money of the American people … like Monopoly money.” Yet, by spending at hyper-​deficit levels and offering no reasonable plan to balance the budget, he demonstrates a preference to play Monopoly™, not Responsibility®.

Now, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has a plan. He spelled it out Tuesday, giving it a hopeful moniker, “The Path to Prosperity.”

“Prosperity’s Around the Corner” was already taken in the noösphere.

The most salient feature of the plan, though, is that it designed to take its own sweet time. The budget wouldn’t balance next year. Or the year after. Or even in five, like Sen. Rand Paul’s much better plan. 

Besides, today’s Congress can’t control itself must less control future Congresses. That’s the trouble with all these procrastinating plans.

Remember, even Rand Paul thinks his plan takes too long and doesn’t go far enough.

Of course, Obama dislikes Ryan’s plan. The new White House press secretary offers, “The President believes there is a more balanced way to put America on a path to prosperity.”

But he won’t share it with us. Obama and congressional Democrats are playing the oldest game in the book: All talk but no responsibility.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall responsibility

Pension Declension

The ugliest truth about California’s newest, gimmick-​ridden budget, is that it doesn’t address the looming public employee pension issue. Adam Summers, a Reason Foundation policy analyst, gave some figures in the Orange County Register, explaining that these pensions have been “recently pegged at up to roughly $500 billion — roughly $36,000 for every household in California”:

Throw in the $50 billion or so in unfunded retiree health care liabilities, a $10 billion unemployment insurance fund debt, and the state’s $152 billion in general obligation bond debt, and you start to get a fuller sense of the state’s true financial problems.

The current plan to deal with this — reducing pensions for new state hires back to 1999 levels — Summers says was tried before, and failed. And by “failed” I mean revised after the fact and retroactively negated by the state Assembly. 

Summers says there’s only one way out: 

Politicians can’t continue to merely nibble around the edges of the state’s pension crisis. It’s time to admit that the 401(k)-style retirement plans that are good enough for nearly every private sector worker are going to have to be good enough for state workers, too.

But do politicians have the guts or the principles required? An initiative is needed. No level of government should be allowed to offer any pension not fully invested at the time of wage or salary payment — or promising a specified pay-out.

That would be as revolutionary as the legendary Prop 13.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies responsibility

Deficits Matter Morally

There are two things I don’t understand. 

Actually, there are many things I don’t understand, but what I’m thinking about, now, is how one can honestly defend massive government deficits in one of the two usual ways. 

The first defense became a cliché while I still wore footsie pajamas: Deficits don’t matter because we owe the debt “to ourselves.”

The truth? More complicated. Some people buy debt; others don’t. Were we to “forgive us our debts” (to appropriate a familiar phrase), we wouldn’t be forgiving what we owe “us,” but what the “U.S.” owes just those investors who’ve bought that debt. 

And not even “everybody” owes the debt, since the taxes that would be collected, extra, to pay the debt might not come out of your pocket, or mine — it’ll come out of those pockets, over there. (Of course, you’re probably thinking, “I should be so lucky!”)

No wonder government debt is so tempting. On the surface it’s all inclusive. “We’re all in this together.” But beneath, it’s some folks trying to get one over on other folks.

Nasty, eh?

Then what about today’s excuse: “We owe it to folks overseas.” Since much of our governments’ debt gets bought up by investors abroad, we don’t have to worry about it because …

The unspoken thought is: “We’ll just renege on our promises.” Not pay it. Screw them.

Simple truth: Apologists for growing deficits flirt with mass theft from the government’s creditors.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Freeze Federal Salaries

Procrastination feeds deficits. Deficits feed debt. Debt feeds catastrophe.

Politicians avoid balancing budgets by saying they will do so not this year, but “sometime in the future.” Hence our looming debt crisis. This debt either must be paid, defaulted, or … “monetized.”

That last term is code for inflation.

Why not bring the need for cuts and inflation together? After all, the Federal Reserve still exists, so some inflation is inevitable. Inflation is what central banks like the Fed do.

So, barring a complete monetary reform, simply freeze all federal salaries, at least until the average level of compensation for federal jobs matches the average level of compensation for comparable private-​sector jobs.

Currently, as James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation has uncovered, federal workers earn 22 percent more than private sector workers … and that’s just in terms of nominal pay. If our politicians turned heroic and cut these down to where they should be, immediately, we’d save $47 billion in taxpayer funds per year.

But it gets worse, as Chris Prandoni writes: “The average federal civilian employee earns on average $32,115 a year in non-​cash compensation compared to a private sector employee who earns three times less, $9,882 annually.”

So freeze benefits, too. Defrost only when they match private sector levels. 

Politicians could start the freeze right now, just to show a smidgen of discipline. More likely? They’ll go with what they know: Procrastination. 

Responsibility? Wait for another freeze. Of hell’s shiny surface.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
responsibility too much government

Fiasco Economics

Every time a financial fiasco hits, politicians readily expand regulations. But what’s the point of adding to the regulatory barrage if it’s all just for show?

They studiously avoid asking the right questions:

  1. What previous regulations caused (or helped cause) the fiasco?
  2. What previous regulations that could have prevented the fiasco weren’t enforced?

Economist Gerald O’Driscoll, Jr., writing in the Wall Street Journal, adds a few notes of caution to the current regulation madness. Most regulatory bodies get “captured” by the businesses they regulate. A huge amount of research shows how supposedly anti-​business regulations serve the interests of some businesses at the expense of their competitors. 

It’s the crony capitalist equivalent to politicians making it harder for challengers using “campaign finance” regulations. Same game, different venue.

O’Driscoll also explains which regulations weren’t enforced prior to the recent meltdown — those against fraud. This form of regulation is not like the regs politicians usually propose. It’s basic rule of law, the government’s first responsibility. 

And regarding Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and Bernie Madoff, government failed. 

O’Driscoll argues that multiplying rules and regulations is not merely the wrong response, but a sorry repeat of the last century’s “great intellectual failure.” Pity, then, to see the current administration push just that. 

Following this path will just lead to the same old recycling of the boom and bust cycle. Freedom and responsibility — where criminal fraud is actually fought by government, not encouraged — work better. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.